ZOOLOGY Ax\'U BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 153 



Protozoa. 



Foraminifera from Portuguese East Africa.* — Edward Heron- 

 Allen and Arthur Earlaud describe two very interesting new genera 

 from the Kerimba Archipelago. In India diaphana g. et sp. n., the test 

 is adventitious, usually attached, occasionally more or less free, consisting 

 of a single cavity lined with a chitinous and diaphanous membrane or 

 pellicle. The animal commences its existence as a small hemispherical 

 dome-shaped chamber, white or light grey in colour, attached to sand- 

 grains or shell-fragments, and constructed of very fine particles of mud 

 and sand cemented together into a rather friable test with a chitinous 

 lining. This chitinous lining is usually continued as a " floor " to the 

 dome-shaped chamber, but in the youngest stage the chitinous floor is 

 perhaps not always present The early dome-stage has sometimes an 

 aperture at the top or side of the dome, but quite as often no special 

 aperture is visible. The test increases in size by the protrusion of the 

 protoplasm in irregular masses, which proceed to secrete a covering 

 investment of sand-grains, attached to the chitinous lining. With the 

 growth of the organism the construction of the test becomes coarser and 

 the colour darker. With each increase in the size of the test, the en- 

 closing wall of the preceding stage is absorbed so as to leave an undivided 

 cavity of variable shape. In rare cases the test spreads as a forking 

 tube. The external shape and the internal cavity may be very irregular 

 owing to the haphazard mode of growth. 



It seems clear that Iridia is a very simple and primitive Rhizopod. 

 In its sessile hemispherical form, its chitinous lining, and occasionally 

 papillate processes, it shows affinities with Tliurammina and Webbina, 

 but the aberrant and loosely constructed adult test is more suggestive of 

 Astrorhiza, and it is in the family Astrorhizidae that the authors place 

 it. Some of the large specimens are strongly suggestive of Astrorhiza 

 I i in kola, but lack the produced arms characteristic of that species. The 

 genus may be regarded as being to some extent isomorphous with 

 Nubecidaria lucifuga Defrance. It may be noted that stages in its life- 

 history were previously referred by the authors, with reservations, to 

 Thurammiaa papillata and Webbina hemisphserica. There is extra- 

 ordinary diversity in size of the Kerimba specimens, from 0'25 mm. in 

 diameter in the early stages to 1 mm. in the adult stages. But some 

 gigantic forms were 8 mm. m greatest diameter. 



The second new genus is Novria with three new species, which 

 seemed at first like Beophax ampullacea Brady. Closer examination 

 showed, however, that the shells were not monothalamous as in 

 R. ampullacea, but polythalamous and more or less in a spiral in a Poly- 

 morphine manner. Many of them are conspicuous in having relatively 

 large and highly coloured mineral particles in their tests, as well as in 

 being of large size and irregular contour. Among the Kerimba specimens 

 of Nouria poly morpho ides, there is considerable variety of forms, com- 

 parable mainly with Polymorph ina compressa d'Orbigny, but also with 



* Trans. Zool. Soc, xv. (1914) pp. 363-90 (3 pis.). 

 April 21st, 1915 M 



